Small Wonders:

I was 2 when he left. When I became a father and my daughter turned 2, I looked at her and tried to imagine how it would feel to walk away from her.

Like so many children of divorced parents, the childhood memories I have of my father are a patchwork of contractually obligated visits — one weekend per month, two weeks in the summer, a phone call on holidays or birthdays — vignettes in which I was to suck the marrow of the father-son relationship as quickly as possible before returning to the protective wings of my mother hen.

I loved visiting my father, though he was half-stranger, half-parent. He and his new wife moved around, and the farther they went, the less frequent were our visits. But my favorite place to see him was Catalina Island. I’d take the sea plane over, and the pilot would let me sit in the cockpit and watch the ocean rise to meet us as we descended into Avalon.

One day, walking up the short hill to his house, he stopped, looked over a fence and whistled down into the darkness of a eucalyptus-shaded valley. He whistled a short call, and from nowhere came the response. An unseen myna bird sang back, note for note, mysterious and pure. He smiled and we walked on.

I tried to get that myna bird to whistle back to me every time I walked up that hill. I don’t recall ever hearing its song back.

As the youngest among my siblings, I was the lucky one. With no real memorable experience of my father before the divorce, I didn’t know I was missing anything. You can’t crave candy if you don’t know what it tastes like. I thought it was odd when the fathers of other kids showed up to Cub Scout events, tee ball and football games. I thought every boy learned how to play catch with his mom.

When my father discovered that I liked camping, fishing and the outdoors like him, he did his best to teach me all he knew of these things in our brief visits. It’s these moments in our shared passion that are most dear to me. How to pitch a tent, start a campfire, tie a fishing knot or dress a freshly caught trout. He taught me the peace of nature, and every lake became our Walden.

Summer visits to his house were both comforting and uncomfortable. I was so glad to see my father, yet the familiarity he had with his new family made me feel like an outsider. I loved them, but I couldn’t wait to hit the road and have my father to myself.